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Essentially the manufacturer involved was violating the GPL, so they were pressing this issue with said manufacturer. The manufacturer relented eventually but then decided to try to force different hardware on them and then renegaded on the deal entirely.

I'm in China right now, and I'll tell you that a lot of the problem with hardware manufacturers right now is that a lot of their "driver code" is already stolen from another corporation or open source drivers and they don't want anybody to know because they're terrified of the punishment that the Chinese government would deal out. So if they "open source" their code, their company will likely get sued and/or shut down by another company and/or the Chinese government instantly which would put them out of business. So a lot of Chinese companies think it's "not smart" to be open sourcing their hardware code because they know that 90% of it is already stolen without permission, and they stole it from major corporations by having somebody on the inside of the mega corporation sending source code "under the table" or by hacking attacks against major corporations.

I don't think there's a whole lot to be gained from having an "open platform" based on Chinese designed hardware, chances are if they gave you the code under an "open source" license, you'll have a mega corporation knocking on your door demanding to know how the hell you got your hands on *THEIR* proprietary source code.

Very few hardware manufacturers here have their own original source code to go with their hardware, and the ones that do are all based in Taiwan instead of Mainland China.

Just my 2 cents, but I think expecting an entirely open platform for a tablet right now is a bit too high of a bar. They should just focus on getting a Plasma Active tablet out the door and then later focus more on "open platform".

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As said, this exactly what Rhombus-tech has been trying to do for the last few years. Work a SoC manufacturer an a hardware manufacturer to actually try to comply with the GPL. That's why I say, rhombus-tech has experience and I'm sure will gladly work with them.

As for Stealing codes etc in china, I know Allwinnertech is based in China, and their SoC is very open source right now. What IS lacking is the GPU en VPU drivers. And with regards to the GPU, many many SoC's use the mali400. Actually, I don't think any Chinese SoC manufacturer uses their own GPU. And with that, you are bound to ARM (or powervr, adreno etc) and those players play even less nice. The only hope the KDE team has in that regard, is working with the lima/freedreno devs.

Comment

I'm in China right now, and I'll tell you that a lot of the problem with hardware manufacturers right now is that a lot of their "driver code" is already stolen from another corporation or open source drivers and they don't want anybody to know because they're terrified of the punishment that the Chinese government would deal out. So if they "open source" their code, their company will likely get sued and/or shut down by another company and/or the Chinese government instantly which would put them out of business. So a lot of Chinese companies think it's "not smart" to be open sourcing their hardware code because they know that 90% of it is already stolen without permission, and they stole it from major corporations by having somebody on the inside of the mega corporation sending source code "under the table" or by hacking attacks against major corporations.

I don't think there's a whole lot to be gained from having an "open platform" based on Chinese designed hardware, chances are if they gave you the code under an "open source" license, you'll have a mega corporation knocking on your door demanding to know how the hell you got your hands on *THEIR* proprietary source code.

Very few hardware manufacturers here have their own original source code to go with their hardware, and the ones that do are all based in Taiwan instead of Mainland China.

Just my 2 cents, but I think expecting an entirely open platform for a tablet right now is a bit too high of a bar. They should just focus on getting a Plasma Active tablet out the door and then later focus more on "open platform".

There are Chinese company’s without problems like that: Loongson hardware.

Comment

A tablet with KDE on it?
Here's the first thing you would have to do if you ever ended up with one in your hands.... erase that KDE off it.

It would be less painful to bash your head against the pavement than to struggle around with a tablet running KDE. BAD idea.

As pointed out above Plasma active is not KDE.

Secondly the whole point of having open hardware is that is becomes simple to install new software. want to dual boot PA, maemo/tizen, android and gentoo. cool. no ugly hacks, and the devs can help point you in the right direction.

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Secondly the whole point of having open hardware is that is becomes simple to install new software. want to dual boot PA, maemo/tizen, android and gentoo. cool. no ugly hacks, and the devs can help point you in the right direction.